Jim Harmon 27 min read

Every lonely man tries to make friends, William Manet just didn't know when to stop. Utterly alone, he sets out to measure how long solitude takes to drive a man mad.

Jim Harmon's 1962 story spins a sharp, melancholy tale of isolation, artificial companionship, and the cost of never being alone again. Clever, poignant golden-age SF. Read it for a story about a solitary man who solves his loneliness so thoroughly that he creates a whole new problem.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

27 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

West